Project VELAIA

The morning was quite cool so I got on the bike and moving as fast as I might. The road was now constantly above 1000 meters and I even had a pass of 2160 meters (Sakaltutan Gec,idi). The valley was surrounded by 2000+ meter mountains and from the pass I could even see some of the peaks still covered by snow fields.

In the noon I use to take off 2 or 3 hours when there is no wind or when I have to go uphill slowly because it can get 40+ degress Celsius. The time is usually spent with reading (“Portrait of a Turkish family by Irfan Ora right now), eating, chilling and eating.

Then I normally ride into the evening or sometimes even night. The first night I cycled until 10:30pm and came through a place where they were mining for something and therefore the whole valley was invisible in a cloud of dust and the traffic going slow at 5 to 10km/h as you could barely see the next vehicle in front of you.

The night was spent 1000 meters higher than the night before about 70 km before Erzincan again under a brillant star sky.

The temperatures during the night got down so that I had to hull myself deeply int the sleeping bag which was made for down to -29 degrees Cel. (extreme temperature).

In the morning I had to get on the bike to get warm and the pass I had to take was perfect for that.

After the downhill I stayed at a fuel station near Erzincan where I could shortly check e-mails and where I spoted a hiker passing by. I ate a bit more and then stared to see who this guy walking along the E80 road was. It turned out that I had finally found Samuel, a guy walking from Barcelona to Nepal for a year already now and who I have heard from when I stayed at Nasta’s flat in Thessaloniki. He also stayed in Istanbul with Isa, the host I stayed with, for about a month!

 

We spent the noon, afternoon and evening exchanging information about gear, technical stuff, experiences and walking and riding together into Erzincan. He has a website under www.samu.cat

I wish him a good journey and many more experiences on his spiritual trip to Nepal.

 

I then continued to Erzurum, riding through the night and through beautiful valleys which were first completely dark and I was only able to see the sillhouette of the rocky mountains against the starlite sky and which were later lighted by the moonlight. The reason for continuing through the night was that I knew from my LonelyPlanet guide that the Iran Consulate in Erzurum had opened on Saturdays and so I was hoping to get the visa and not have to rest a single day. But when I arrived in Erzurum in the morning first thing i got hit by a bee into my right foot/leg area

When I came to the Consulate then they wanted me to provide a reference number from the visa section of the Consulate in Istanbul, which I didn’t have and couldn’t get because the guy on the phone from the Istanbul Consulate said that he couldn’t give me the number and got angry quite fast telling me I had to call on Monday again.

So I left the consulate and found a quite pricy hotel where I can recover from the meeting with the bee and the monster stage of 283km and over 2100 meters in altitude. I also want to finish with one or two books for they are so heavy riding up the mountains.